Simply Delicious: The Cookbook Projecthttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com
A recipe-by-recipe adventure working our way through a treasured set of 1980s subscription-based cookbooks.Thu, 18 Apr 2019 01:12:39 +0000en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.1https://i2.wp.com/www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/cropped-Front-Cover.jpg?fit=32%2C32Simply Delicious: The Cookbook Projecthttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com
32321053539064-15: Scalloped Onionshttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/04/13/4-15-scalloped-onions/
Sat, 13 Apr 2019 19:00:42 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=2350“It smells like weird Mexican food in here,” Jamie said as she walked in the door. She wasn’t wrong. The example image sets a rustic farm tone with the watering can, basket of red peppers, and parmesan cheese in the background. The watering can even has onions painted on it. Awesome!

When I saw that it will need reheating before eating, I decided to make this dish in a large rectangle Pyrex. I made this recipe at half size to accommodate the baking dish. I only used two onions because Simply Delicious bases the number of onions on the smaller onions that were available when these recipes were written. Two was more than enough.

The suggestions in the TIPS section is really helpful. Adding almost any kind of vegetable would have bulked this dish out and made it more distinct than just plain vegetable fajitas.

This dish had relatively few ingredients. There’s three onions in this photo, but after I sliced two, I felt I had enough to complete the dish.

This knife makes quick work of the onions. I sliced them as thin as possible.

After the butter melted, I added the onions to the pan and started slicing the peppers. I tried to slice them as thinly as I sliced the onion so it will all cook evenly once they go into the baking dish together.

Mission accomplished, but some of my onions burned while I was slicing.

The onion at this stage was turning soft and slightly brown. Some of the onion burned and I pulled those bits out. In retrospect, I wished I cooked these longer so they all got softer. These were a little under done.

The next step is to create a sauce for the vegetables. The recipe calls for cream, but I just used milk. I followed the instructions and mixed some flour into some water and poured that into the milk to thicken the sauce.

I sprayed the dish so the peppers and onions wouldn’t stick to the sides. In this photo, I’ve just added the first layer of onions, peppers, and seasonings.

Look at it boil! After the milk came to a boil, I cooked it down for a few minutes until it got thick enough to form the sauce.

After I added the second layer of vegetables and seasonings, I added the sauce to the dish. I feel like the recipe didn’t yield enough sauce. Maybe I mis-measured, but it didn’t affect the final quality of the dish that much.

A quick sprinkling of paprika gets applied to the veggies before I pop this dish into the preheated 350 degree toaster oven. The kitchen smelled vaguely of fajitas while it baked.

I’m loving the look of the layers and that bubbly brown top. I hope it tastes half as good as it looks in this photo.

This dish was great fresh out of the oven. Reheated, not so much. It lacked the pop and snap of being freshly cooked and the cheese just melted down to nothing. I ended up tossing the rest of this recipe, but it would make a good vegetable side dish for a larger meal. I wouldn’t recommend serving this as a main course unless you are feeding some skinny vegetarians who don’t care they they will leave hungry.

]]>235015-36: Pear-Orange Sorbethttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/03/03/15-36-pear-orange-sorbet/
Sun, 03 Mar 2019 20:00:23 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1989The photo of this delectable dish is enhanced by the superior dishware chosen to accentuate the fluffiness of the iced desert within. I made 15-36: Pear-Orange Sorbet before a few years ago when we first started this project, but I forgot to take photos. I finally got back to it in January 2019.

The recipe card describes this dish about as well as I could. The ripe pears did have an intense fruity flavor that was intriguing. Can’t beat that.

I wish that I had an ice cream maker on hand for this recipe, but it’s a good thing I don’t have one. I’d probably be making ice cream all of the time. Besides, my freezer is usually pretty full, no room to chill the chamber in it.

These ingredients are so bright and full of flavor. The pears were just right.

I know…I’m using a Publisher’s Clearing House cheap-y orange juicer, but it got the job done and someone gifted it to me for free.

Using this microplane always freaks me out. It is insanely sharp and I almost always cut my finger on it. I need a kevlar or chainmail glove to use it properly. These oranges smelled so good and the rind adds some of the essential oil to the dessert, infusing a deep orange flavor.

Breaking down the pears was easy work with my peeler and apple corer. That apple corer is one of the best uni-tasker tools that we own.

I added the lemon juice and pears to the blender and made pear puree. Then I added the orange juice and rind and blended it all together.

Next, I’m making the simple syrup. 2/3 cup water and 2/3 cup sugar go into the pan and I started whisking until it started boiling.

Voila! It’s boiling. The sugar dissolved by now so I pulled this off the heat and let it cool. It took a few minutes during which I cleaned up a little.

Time to add the simple syrup to the blender. A rare action shot!

The final touch is a splash of Grand Marnier. One for you, one for me!

The Vitamix makes quick work of blending everything together!

This container just barely fit in my freezer. I left the mix in there for a few days. Some days I forgot it was up there, other days I wasn’t in the mood. After I picked up some coconut whipped topping, I got inspired to try this dish with a little whip on top.

Time to bring out the big guns. The food processor will blend this rock solid chunk of juice into a fluffy delicious sorbet. I had to run the container under hot water to get the edges to release and it all came out in one piece.

I snapped the disc in two pieces so it would fit into the bowl. Time to process!

So fluffy! Such light. Very whipped. Speaking of whipped….

Coco Whip stands in pretty well for a dairy free alternative to the brand name whipped topping that contains dairy. The sorbet looks frozen over because I put it back in the freezer after I whipped it up and this is what it looks like upon being served a second time from the original container. The mix is still light and fluffy, just tighter packed that when it was freshly whipped. The juice that leached out was super boozey.

Served with a generous dollop of Coco Whip, this sorbet really delivers an orange and pear flavored alcohol bomb to your tongue. It’s great.

I included the spoon in this shot for scale to show that a little bit of this dish goes a long way. We had this for dessert a couple of times and it did get a little blah the third time around. Good in small doses, make it for a party so you can serve it fresh to everyone. This is a sweet and cool treat that is low on calories, good for those of you who are counting like myself.

]]>19891-2: Marinated Stuffed Avocadohttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/03/02/1-2-marinated-stuffed-avocado/
Sat, 02 Mar 2019 20:00:45 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1968Avocados have been a pretty big part of my culinary life up until now, but that’s probably because they’re pretty hard to avoid here in California. However, my experiences are usually closer to some nice fresh guacamole or some avocado toast–1-2: Marinated Stuffed Avocado was relatively new territory for me.

I suppose it’s not unheard of, it’s just not something I think to do. I may try it again, maybe with some different ingredients. Mushrooms are okay, but I much prefer them cooked rather than raw.

Even Simply Delicious mentions that you can swap ingredients. Since meat hasn’t really been on the menu for us lately, I suppose even that’s up for negotiation.

Ingredients. Since chicken’s what we’re supposed to be going for, chik’n will have to do.

I like to slice the avocado in the shell and then slide it out with a spoon. During my restaurant tenure, I made a LOT of Cobb salads (sometimes 6-8 at one time, close to 50 in a shift per day) and I got quite good at taking apart avocados and cubing them up.

Mixing up the veggies.

Diced up the defrosted chik’n. If I didn’t tell you it wasn’t real, would you honestly be able to tell (or care)?

All stuffing ingredients combined. Now I need to make up the dressing.

Empty avocado shells waiting for stuffing. You can see the score lines where I cut the avocados while they were still in the shell.

Dressing ingredients–these are probably easiest to mix in a Pyrex measuring cup.

]]>19684-14: Stuffed Artichokeshttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/03/01/4-14-stuffed-artichokes/
Sat, 02 Mar 2019 02:00:40 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1984Hot Take: Artichokes are the lobster of the vegetable world. 4-14: Stuffed Artichokes represents this well: too much work for too little satisfaction. Peeling the little leaves off the artichoke and harvesting the heart feels a lot like picking apart the carapace of an undersea crustacean.

Stuffing an artichoke with a mushroom stew is a unique way to serve this giant edible thistle flower. These plants don’t grow naturally where I’m from, so my experience with artichokes only came after moving to California. My favorite way to enjoy them is marinated artichoke hearts.

As always, the TIPS section really came through here. I’ve never thought to drain artichokes upside down, but it makes a lot of sense as to why you would. The plant is naturally sitting upright to collect water and sunshine, so to drain completely, it makes sense to put them upside down.

I left one important item out of this ingredient photo, a half a stick of butter. Jamie doesn’t really like artichokes, so I cut this recipe in half. This will leave me with a lot of extra hollandaise, but this is a good thing as you’ll see later.

Even trimmed back, these two artichokes barely fit in the first pot I tried to use, so I scaled up to our biggest pot. The recipe said to add water to barely cover the artichoke. I found it odd because my artichokes were floating, so I’d never really be able to cover them with water. I took the instruction as put enough water to mostly submerge the vegetables. Make sure to add salt!

Hollandaise is perhaps my favorite sauce. It comes on 5-4: Eggs Benedict which is probably my favorite breakfast dish. I’m just glad they make a ready-made version that is easy to prepare.

The recipe calls for half-and-half, so I made my own concoction. First, I started with greek yogurt and then added lactose-free milk until I created one cup of my own half-and-half.

While I’m waiting for the water to boil, I started breaking down the mushrooms and onions for the stew. That knife made quick work of that.

The lid I’m holding in the upper left corner fit perfectly to hold down the artichokes down into the water.

Look at that beautiful green color. These artichokes looked done, so I pulled them to drain and cool down while I started the stew.

Here’s something artistic for a change. A beautiful pad of melting butter in a skillet is the start to many wonderful dishes.

When the onions became slightly translucent, I added the mushrooms and cooked the vegetables until the mushrooms turned slightly golden.

Peeling back all the leaves was effortless. The heart became exposed after lifting a center cluster of petals out of the flower. In this shot, you can see the top of heart covered in fuzzy, hair-like filaments. Those must be removed to eat the tender heart beneath.

That gray matter is another inedible layer. I scraped it off with a spoon and in the process cracked one artichoke heart in three pieces. The other heart came out intact, however this changed my approach to the final plating of the dish.

Time to make the stuffing for these Stuffed Artichokes. First, I added the flour to the vegetables to create a thickening base for the stew.

After I added the half-and-half, I combined everything and cooked until thickened. I tasted it and noticed I hadn’t seasoned anything yet.

Time to add some port wine, thyme, salt and pepper. Now it’s a proper stew. Delicious. Now to figure out how to stuff this into the artichokes.

My artichokes were very tender so they mostly fell apart when I tried to add the stuffing. A few years ago, I learned about how to eat an artichoke so I ate some of these as they fell apart in my hands. Jamie had just recently found these soup bowls in a clearance bin at the supermarket and had to have them. The heart fit perfectly in the bottom of the cup and then I stood the leaves up to create a cup style lining for the stuffing.

The stew took on a beautiful golden color and I had the perfect amount to fill the two artichokes. I should have turned the broiler on by now to get it heating up to temperature, but alas, I forgot until about now.

The recipe calls for cooking all of the artichokes together in a dish and pouring the hollandaise across all of them at once. Since I had a whole packet’s worth of hollandaise for just two artichokes, I got generous with it.

The broiler left a beautiful char on the skin of the hollandaise. This really brought out the nutmeg and butter flavor in the sauce. The leaves got a little singed, but you only eat the bottom of the leaf that is soaked in hollandaisey goodness.

The stew and the sauce combined into a creamy filling that complimented the tender artichoke heart. I immediately ate one and reheated the other a day or so later. I heart-ily (pardon the pun) enjoyed the dish, but would only make it again if I had some other artichoke fans to eat it with me.

]]>198416-33: Crispy Almond Cakehttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/02/20/16-33-crispy-almond-cake/
Wed, 20 Feb 2019 20:00:12 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1935I made 16-33: Crispy Almond Cake last September to pair with 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake as a breakfast treat for my work colleagues. This one was the less fancy of the two, but still went extremely well with some coffee on a Wednesday morning.

This title card blurb mentions that versions of this almond cake can be found all over the United States–Google doesn’t seem to want to confirm that claim for me. Searching almond cake results in severaliterations of a Spanishflourlessalmond cake influenced by the Jewish tradition of Passover. Interesting, but none of them look like this recipe.

I didn’t realize until right now that I should have done a little whipped cream/strawberry garnish on this one to match the Maraschino cherry/glaze on 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake. Plain is okay too, but garnish would have been fun.

Ingredients. My almonds aren’t peeled, but I went to (no joke) 4-5 stores looking for peeled & sliced almonds, and they just. did. not. exist. I finally gave up at Walmart (the final store we went to, after all other options had been exhausted) and went with what you see above.

I made the executive decision in 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake to make 3 smaller tarts instead of one big “cake”, which I carried through to this recipe as well. The reasoning for this was that I wanted to create more smaller-sized pieces instead of a few large slices of each.

The Silpats on the sheet pans serve to stabilize the small tart pans and keep them from sliding around while pulling them in and out of the oven. They also help with cleanup in case of spillover.

Using the food processor to make the crust dough.

The food processor makes quick work of the dough–now it gets wrapped in plastic and chilled in the fridge. Chilling the dough before rolling it out keeps the butter more solidified, which will result in flakier pastry layers when it bakes.

Melting butter in a big saucepan (instead of my usual butter melter) since I’ll be tossing the almonds in soon.

Still seems too big, but it’s nice to have room to work and stir without worrying about spilling over the sides.

Looking much more syrupy now that it’s cooked down for a few minutes.

I pressed the dough into each of the tart pans (going a bit thick around the outsides, but that will help with structural integrity) and poured in the almond filling.

After baking. There was definitely a bit of spillage, but overall they look okay. I think they could use a bit more color, so I popped them back in for a few more minutes.

After a few more minutes in the oven, they look nice and crispy on top–hence the name. These remind me a lot of the pecan pies that were always on the Thanksgiving table when I was a kid and we would spend the holiday with family in Georgia (southern USA).

And after garnish & glaze. I kept them whole for now and wrapped them up for transport to the office in the morning.

My avant garde presentation once I got to work. Cutting them up into mini tart slices were perfect for each person to sample a piece of each with their morning coffee/tea/whatever. I think 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake was my favorite by just a hair (I’m a sucker for Maraschino cherries), but these were delicious as well.

]]>19358-43: Chinese Beef and Ricehttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/02/19/8-43-chinese-beef-and-rice/
Tue, 19 Feb 2019 20:00:46 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=19398-43: Chinese Beef and Rice is essentially beef stir-fry served with some rice, but it’s done in less than 30 minutes, which is a big plus. This one goes along with several other Chineserestaurant-style dishes that Simply Delicious has featured, including 6-11: Chinese Duck and 11-36: Hong Kong Shrimp.

Chinese cuisine is a lot more prevalent today in the United States than it was 30-40 years ago when Simply Delicious was being written & printed. I suppose we have cookbooks like this to thank in some small part for introducing many 1980s American families to a more global palate.

Speaking of a global palate–I made this dish vegan. Yes, that picture above is vegan–keep reading to find out how. #clickbait

Check out the TIPS–salt was a concern in the 1980s (along with a lot of other nutritional things), but they do have a point. Don’t go too crazy with it or you’ll regret it the next morning. Maybe that’s just me–things affect you differently in your 30s than they did in your earlier years.

Ingredients. I swapped real beef for “beefless tips“–were you even able to tell before now? The “fake” meat is getting better and better each year–we really don’t even eat the real stuff anymore. I went with a leek instead of green onions, and jasmine rice for my long-grain option. Oh, and I swapped butter for canola oil to make this version of this dish vegan.

]]>193916-26: Elegant Almond Cakehttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/02/18/16-26-elegant-almond-cake/
Mon, 18 Feb 2019 20:00:45 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1912A few months ago, I made two Simply Delicious almond cakes for work: this one, 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake and 16-33: Crispy Almond Cake. I think this one came out prettier, but they were both delicious.

Simply Delicious doesn’t mention this in their blurb, but it’s also great for accompanying coffee or tea on a Wednesday morning at the office. They also refer to this dish as a cake, but it’s very clearly a tart. To confirm, here’s a recipe from King Arthur Flour that is essentially this exact same dish (referred to a tart) but with raspberries instead of Maraschino cherries.

If you don’t have or don’t want to use Maraschino cherries, you could use real ones (canned, frozen, or probably even fresh) instead. Cherry liqueur might be difficult to locate, but I found my bottle at a BevMo.

Ingredients. Don’t buy Maraschino cherries from Costco unless you plan on making a lot of Shirley Temples. That tall bottle in the middle is the cherry liqueur–I went with Luxardo, which is Maraschino cherry liqueur.

Tossing dough ingredients into the food processor.

Getting crumbly. Notice I used the smaller, duller dough blade since that’s what I’m making with it.

It’s a ball of dough!

And now it’s a ball of dough covered in foil. This will sit in my fridge while I work on the filling.

Chopping the almond paste up into 8 pieces helps me figure out 5 oz without the scale. The package is 8 oz, so 5 pieces = approximately 5 oz. The rest becomes snacks–it’s essentially marzipan.

I decided to make each recipe into 3 smaller tart-sized cakes–it’ll make much better bite-sized pieces once I cut them up to share.

I pressed the chilled dough into the springform tart pans after mixing up the filling in the food processor.

Filling looks pretty liquidy, but it will firm up as it cooks.

Filled each as evenly as I could (since I’m splitting it up).

After baking. Each got nicely browned on top, and they’ll sink back down a bit from their currently rounded state as they cool.

]]>191211-6: Sweet and Sour Shrimphttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/02/17/11-6-sweet-and-sour-shrimp/
Sun, 17 Feb 2019 20:00:13 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=172511-6: Sweet and Sour Shrimp is another of those dishes that I’d love to order from a restaurant and would not think to make at home. Simply Delicious has quite a few Chinese restaurant-style dishes, including 6-27: Sweet and Sour Chicken, 6-11: Chinese Duck, and 11-36: Hong Kong Shrimp.

It just so happens that Sweet and Sour Sauce is my favorite version of any dish on a Chinese menu. Shrimp is a decent choice.

The TIPS Section provided a helpful suggestion which I actually utilized in this post. I used apple cider vinegar for its extra tangy flavor.

There’s so many ingredients in this recipe. I substituted sliced bamboo shoots for water chestnuts. Bamboo, water chestnuts, same thing.

It was easy to put together the sauce with the reserved pineapple juice, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, cornstarch, chicken base, and brown mustard because it’s the closest to dry mustard that we had in the house at the time. I made this first before I started chopping.

It was quick work to chop the onion, carrots and bamboo shoots. I made the pieces similar sized so they will cook evenly.

This time, I used the large skillet instead of the flat bottomed wok that I used in a prior Simply Delicious Recipe. I let the veggies saute a little longer and then I pulled them from the pan to get ready for heating up the shrimp.

Heating up the shrimp from frozen doesn’t take long. The steam and haze is from the water evaporating from the sizzling.

A super rare action shot! Pouring the sauce base into the pan gave a satisfying hiss and the smell of pineapple juice filled the air.

The sauce started to thicken right away. It is important to stir the cornstarch into the liquid before heating it up. You want the starch to distribute evenly.

Finally, I added the vegetables, pineapple chunks, and bamboo shoots into the pan. It takes only a few minutes for everything to heat to the same temperature. When I started cooking this dish, I thought ahead and got some rice going in the rice cooker.

Wow! It’s like I ordered a dish from my favorite restaurant, but I made it all myself. Just like the other Chinese-inspired Simply Delicious recipes, it is more difficult to make this dish at home instead of just having it delivered. Served with a side of rice, this aromatic shrimp dish is both sweet and sour.

]]>17257-33: Country Dinnerhttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/02/16/7-33-country-dinner/
Sun, 17 Feb 2019 01:00:28 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1937We’re getting to the some of the last recipes I have for some of these chapters, and 7-33: Country Dinner is one of the few remaining entries from the Pork chapter of Simply Delicious. Honestly, this recipe as it exists is not much more than mashed potatoes with bacon and onions. That doesn’t sound bad per se, but I don’t know if it constitutes “dinner”.

Google only gave me a few results for similarrecipes, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t too far off from the mashed potato bowls you can get at like KFC. If anything, the KFC ones come with more stuff in them.

The TIPS section offers the additional option of apples–I think I’d add corn or peas before apples, but YMMV.

Ingredients. I used tempeh bacon instead of regular, but everything else is what’s called for. I also added some black garlic seasoning for an additional kick.

Peeling potatoes into the sink. Putting a paper towel down first to catch the peels makes for easy cleanup.

Chopped the peeled potatoes to get them ready for boiling.

On the stove, coming up to temperature.

Prepping the tempeh bacon. It doesn’t look the same, and I can definitely admit that it doesn’t taste the same, but it achieves the same goal (at least for us).

Getting some color on the bacon while the potatoes boil.

Chopping the onions. This may be closer to a dice than a chop, but I like my onion pieces on the smaller side.

I overcooked the tempeh bacon a little bit–there’s a bit of a learning curve.

Onions cooking in the same pan as the bacon did–don’t want to waste flavor.

Potatoes are boiled and ready to drain.

Tossed the drained potatoes back into the pot they boiled in for seasoning and mashing.

Potato mashers are also great avocado mashers–there, now it’s a two-use tool.

Spreading the seasoned mashed potatoes into the pan.

I like to spread mashed potatoes in the pan like brownie batter.

Getting creative with my bacon placement.

When you put the onions on top, it doesn’t look half bad.

There you go–a porkless Pork dish. Wasn’t bad, but I don’t know if I’d consider it a full dinner.

]]>193715-29: Raspberry-Lemon Parfaithttp://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/2019/02/15/15-29-raspberry-lemon-parfait/
Sat, 16 Feb 2019 03:00:05 +0000http://www.simplydeliciouscookbook.com/?p=1845A nice, cool parfait is the perfect dish for summertime. Raspberry and lemon are two of my favorite flavors and they blend together nicely to create this creamy dessert. My version of 15-29: Raspberry-Lemon Parfait will look much different from what you see here, but it is equally as delicious even though it is lactose-free.

The set designer and photographer did a particularly good job of staging the photo for this recipe card. The fresh raspberries and lemon rind really add a nice pop of color. The choice of tablecloth, wine, grapes, and flowers each provide a nice contrast to the yellow and white creamy colors of the dish and the parfait itself.

Editor’s note: This entry was written last summer, but didn’t get posted until now.

I made these parfaits to serve for dessert after a family BBBQ (the extra B is for BYOBB). I thought it would be easier to transport the dish in individual servings and the mugs I chose look pleasant to the eye.

To make this dish lactose-free, I took some liberties with the ingredients. To create the same texture as whipping cream, I chose to use a whipped tapioca topping called truwhip. Greek yogurt is basically the same thing as sour cream, so the substitution was so minor that no one noticed.

Time to get started. I like the process of separating the egg yolks from the whites. It is oddly satisfying. I’m not really sure why I took the photo of a bowl inside a bowl, but looking back on it, I really like how it looks. This is also a rare action shot where I hold the whisk in anticipation of “beating the devil” out of these eggs, as Bob Ross would say.

I might have been keeping ice in the big mixing bowl to keep the eggs cold while I was working with them. I didn’t want anything to get warm and turn into scrambled eggs. This mixture is the base for both flavors of parfait. Time to get out another mixing bowl and make the raspberry base.

Mashing raspberries is so much fun! This purée provides both flavor and color when added into the egg and sugar base.

I skipped a couple of steps and made the lemon parfait base first. Here’s where my mad scientist mind started to come into play. Why make the parfait in a loaf pan with only 2 layers? MORE LAYERS, I SAY! I also chose to make the servings in individual mugs.

The raspberry parfait went from blood red to pink as all of the ingredients blended together. Time to pour some parfait!

We had these mason jar mugs with handles that I thought would be the perfect serving vessel for this delicious treat. It was tough to dispense the parfait into the mug without it touching the sides. I wanted to get clean layers of raspberry and lemon parfait.

It’s not perfect, but it’s starting to look like I imagined. A layer of raspberry, a layer of lemon, then another layer of raspberry. I think I started to run out of raspberry at this point so I could only go 4 layers deep.

With the last layer of lemon in the jar, the parfaits need to chill in the fridge until I am ready to serve. I think it’s so cool how you can see the striations of color through the side of the mug. It would have been nice if I could have gotten the layers to be even, next time, I need to use a better measuring method to ensure consistency. Uneven layers aside, they will taste great.

Is that whipped cream in that photo? Yes, it was easier to use a can of whipped cream to top 3 out of the 4 parfaits as the truwhip topping is served out of a container much like Cool-Whip. I ate the truwhip topped version while everyone else enjoyed their whipped cream topped parfaits.

With an added raspberry on top for color, these parfaits were a huge hit. Sweet and creamy while also tart and fruity, this dessert features flavors that can be enjoyed by all. The different colors reminds me of doing a sand art jar as a kid, only with the added benefit of being edible (and before you ask, NO, I did not try to eat the colored sand as a child, I swear). This dish was rated highly by the entire party of diners that night, so I will consider this a Simply Delicious success story.